Track owner explores changing ordinance
BY ALYSSA MEIER
Editor
One owner of the debated go-kart track in Washburn approached the city’s Planning and Zoning Board Monday to request information on changing ordinances.
Bill Matthews, who owns Hooter & Scooter and its affiliated go-kart track, told the advisory board that he felt wording in the city’s zoning ordinance needed clarification.
“It’s kind of a gray area one way or another,” Matthews said at the meeting. “It was interpreted two different ways.”
Matthews and his partner Darrell Scheresky attended multiple Washburn City Commission meetings earlier this year after laying asphalt for the go-kart track in a highway-commercial zoned lot. Neighbors were uneasy about the track, which bordered a residential neighborhood, and had approached the commission with their concerns.
After debate between the commission, neighbors and track owners on whether or not the track fit under the city’s permitted uses for the lot, the commission requested an official opinion from City Attorney David Lindell. Lindell, noting that permitted uses were all indoor facilities and the track wasn’t, stated that, according to the ordinance, “the proposed go-cart track … would not be a permitted use of property.”
Matthews told Planning and Zoning members Monday that Lindell advised him the ordinance could be changed, and that he wanted to know where to start.
